I've always been taken by singers who have extraordinary vocal range. To span multiple octaves with grace, strength and apparent ease - that's always struck me as the price of entry in the world-class singing game.
And that's what struck me today, as I listened in on a daily project meeting (we call them "standups") with a team of our application developers, template designers, and project managers: the range they covered as they ticked off the issues involved in automating a multi-channel marketing program for the sales force of a global energy client.
In a 15-minute meeting, the conversation ranged from the security implications of using a core jquery component (a 2010 kinda issue), to the details of US postal regulations for mass mailings (dating, I'm sure to the mid-1960s) to the best version of Caslon to use for display-type applications (a passionate design debate since the 1890s, I'd bet).
Three centuries worth of issues, all packed into a 6x9 postcard layout and the application that automates its design. And yet here was this team (twenty and thirty somethings) digesting it all with enthusiasm.
And in a world of careening Camrys and crackpot Congressmen, that gave me hope.
Because at Pica9, we really do BUILD things. Solid things - systems that last. We have an application for one client with roots that are older than my fourth-grade son. And it runs, and runs well, for thousands of users to this day, and will for years to come.
And these design tools last for decades because the people who are building them have that range I was talking about. One foot in the world of software, one hand in the world of design, another foot stretching out to touch the world of social media, online video, and on, and on. An intellectual game of Twister, with brand managers, our clients, spinning the spinner to tell us where our free limb needs to go next.
So, the next time I hear at a cocktail party or a travel soccer game that we Americans don't build things anymore, I'll just remember that team of ours in the middle of their standup, and you know what I'll do?
I'll break into song.
May 4, 2010
Justifying Justified Type
Every few weeks, I get a hankering for a really nice piece of justified type. You know what I mean: that beautiful block of (hopefully) beautifully written text, set so well that you re-read the paragraph just for the pleasure of witnessing a job permanently well done.
You won't find that--at least not easily--on the web. Newspapers had to abandon it a long time ago. Book publishers? They've got other issues kindling, if you know what I mean. And the magazine guys seem to have decided that visual violence is a good substitute for design. (Catty, but too often true.)
So where do I go to get my fully justified mojo? I go into my wife's office, perch on a three-foot stack of art historical tomes, and open a catalogue raisonne, preferably one published before 1960.
I call it embracing my inner Luddite.
Because there, on those big generous sheets, I see page after page of handcrafted, painstaking, fully-damn-justified type and I marvel at the sheer work of it.
And I know as I sit there, that we at Pica9 have not reached this level in our treatment of type.
Oh, we're working on it, don't get me wrong. Our system architect just showed me a new line-wrapping algorithm that could make our long-form copy more graceful. And I know we'll try it next week, or some variant of it, and I'll go and get geeky with the guys when we automagically make a river in a long column of text disappear.
As I sit there, looking down at the work of that 1930s typesetter, I think of the other techniques we're using today.
And I know that someday we're going to get all the way there.
But in the meantime, we have to keep the appreciation of truly beautiful type alive--or else, when we finally summit the same peaks that those anonymous artists of last century climbed with such diligence, there won't be anybody with an eye for type to appreciate what we've managed to do.
So if you ever hear somebody mourning the demise of great typesetting, take a moment to listen. Ask him or her to show you what they mean.
And remember: their sense of loss is, well, justified.
You won't find that--at least not easily--on the web. Newspapers had to abandon it a long time ago. Book publishers? They've got other issues kindling, if you know what I mean. And the magazine guys seem to have decided that visual violence is a good substitute for design. (Catty, but too often true.)
So where do I go to get my fully justified mojo? I go into my wife's office, perch on a three-foot stack of art historical tomes, and open a catalogue raisonne, preferably one published before 1960.
I call it embracing my inner Luddite.
Because there, on those big generous sheets, I see page after page of handcrafted, painstaking, fully-damn-justified type and I marvel at the sheer work of it.
And I know as I sit there, that we at Pica9 have not reached this level in our treatment of type.
Oh, we're working on it, don't get me wrong. Our system architect just showed me a new line-wrapping algorithm that could make our long-form copy more graceful. And I know we'll try it next week, or some variant of it, and I'll go and get geeky with the guys when we automagically make a river in a long column of text disappear.
As I sit there, looking down at the work of that 1930s typesetter, I think of the other techniques we're using today.
- Client-specific kerning pairs.
- Context-sensitive type-sizing.
And I know that someday we're going to get all the way there.
But in the meantime, we have to keep the appreciation of truly beautiful type alive--or else, when we finally summit the same peaks that those anonymous artists of last century climbed with such diligence, there won't be anybody with an eye for type to appreciate what we've managed to do.
So if you ever hear somebody mourning the demise of great typesetting, take a moment to listen. Ask him or her to show you what they mean.
And remember: their sense of loss is, well, justified.
Giving Due Diligence Its Due
I just spent a mind-numbing few hours filling out a Due Diligence document for the IT department of one of our oldest and dearest clients.
Now, trust me when I say that I love these particular IT guys. They've taught me more in a day about what it means to run an enterprise-class application than I would have learned in a year.
But their desire for documentation, their sheer persnicketiness, always threatens to play havoc with the one-time copywriter, sometime-actor, right-brain kind of guy I fancy myself to be.
So this Due Diligence got me to thinking about the unstinting demand for discipline. And you know what I saw? I saw a little glimpse of beauty, once again.
Here's how the image emerged from the details in which I've been mired all day.
I thought of all of the procedures we've labored to define at Pica9, in the effort to run a disciplined development shop. I thought about all the gentle persuading it takes to get a crew of developers ("creatives" all, and don't let the computer science degrees fool you) to follow a standard path to a common goal.
AI thought of all the hours our application managers spend on the client side, juggling the idiosyncrasies that are woven into the client culture, and then fitting our methods to each individual brand of enterprise madness.
And it occurred to me that well-defined policies and procedures are like the cairns they build in the rocky wastes above treeline on mountain paths. In the bright light of a sunny afternoon, these stacks of stone strike you as ancient and irrelevant. But when the fog sets in and the path disappears, you find yourself seeking them out and blessing them for their impervious, immovable existence. And you want to thank the nameless trekkers before you, who stacked stone on stone so you wouldn't lose your way.
So, for you clients out there, who wonder sometimes if your marketing automation vendor is making mountains out of development molehills, know this: A vendor who obsesses on details may bore you to tears in a meeting. But he's a lot less likely to let your system go down at 2 am on a holiday weekend.
And for you creatives out there who, like me, chafe under the demands of due-diligence, here's a thought.
It's rare for people to see brilliance within discipline. But it's even more rare to achieve brilliance without it.
Now, trust me when I say that I love these particular IT guys. They've taught me more in a day about what it means to run an enterprise-class application than I would have learned in a year.
But their desire for documentation, their sheer persnicketiness, always threatens to play havoc with the one-time copywriter, sometime-actor, right-brain kind of guy I fancy myself to be.
So this Due Diligence got me to thinking about the unstinting demand for discipline. And you know what I saw? I saw a little glimpse of beauty, once again.
Here's how the image emerged from the details in which I've been mired all day.
I thought of all of the procedures we've labored to define at Pica9, in the effort to run a disciplined development shop. I thought about all the gentle persuading it takes to get a crew of developers ("creatives" all, and don't let the computer science degrees fool you) to follow a standard path to a common goal.
AI thought of all the hours our application managers spend on the client side, juggling the idiosyncrasies that are woven into the client culture, and then fitting our methods to each individual brand of enterprise madness.
And it occurred to me that well-defined policies and procedures are like the cairns they build in the rocky wastes above treeline on mountain paths. In the bright light of a sunny afternoon, these stacks of stone strike you as ancient and irrelevant. But when the fog sets in and the path disappears, you find yourself seeking them out and blessing them for their impervious, immovable existence. And you want to thank the nameless trekkers before you, who stacked stone on stone so you wouldn't lose your way.
So, for you clients out there, who wonder sometimes if your marketing automation vendor is making mountains out of development molehills, know this: A vendor who obsesses on details may bore you to tears in a meeting. But he's a lot less likely to let your system go down at 2 am on a holiday weekend.
And for you creatives out there who, like me, chafe under the demands of due-diligence, here's a thought.
It's rare for people to see brilliance within discipline. But it's even more rare to achieve brilliance without it.
Social Media - Challenges
So, it's long about midnight last night and I'm working on a visual spec when my IM client chimes in its politely obstreperous (read, passive/aggressive?) way.
It's a local user--a hotel GM -- and she's up in arms about the social media tools we just put at her fingertips through her brand's online marketing toolkit.
"I don't DO social," she IMs me, "and I don't see why anybody WOULD."
And I think to myself, "Wow. If that isn't a case of the kettle calling the pot pitch black, well, I don't know what is."
Here, we've got a fairly senior exec for a really serious brand IMing me at midnight, fully expecting an instant response. And this au courant correspondent (46, if she's a day, like me) is convinced she doesn't "do" social. Even though she's been doing social (as I define it, going back to the prehistoric patter of AOL bulletin boards) pretty much every day of her career.
And then, of course, it hits me. My DDS (don't do social) confrere isn't turned off by technology. She's rebelling against the added burden of one more demand on her time.
Because, really, who has time to update a motley band of on-again/off-again followers, when there's a management meeting this morning at nine?
Who has the mental space to manufacture a Facebook update that rises above the oh-so-obvious mundane?
Above all, who has the hair-raising hubris to hope that their last-second blurts could magically rise to the level of the noteworthy?
No, social--real social, good social--takes TIME.
And time, of course, is the one currency that Goldman Sachs cannot game.
So, what did I do with my socially challenged GM? I IMed her instantly, of course--to tell her our purpose is to streamline the process without sapping the context of what she and her business have to say. To help her interleave offers with ideas; special rates with local insights. Our goal is to help her get social right in the five or so minutes she has per day.
That's a tall order, I know. I'll let you all know how it goes...
It's a local user--a hotel GM -- and she's up in arms about the social media tools we just put at her fingertips through her brand's online marketing toolkit.
"I don't DO social," she IMs me, "and I don't see why anybody WOULD."
And I think to myself, "Wow. If that isn't a case of the kettle calling the pot pitch black, well, I don't know what is."
Here, we've got a fairly senior exec for a really serious brand IMing me at midnight, fully expecting an instant response. And this au courant correspondent (46, if she's a day, like me) is convinced she doesn't "do" social. Even though she's been doing social (as I define it, going back to the prehistoric patter of AOL bulletin boards) pretty much every day of her career.
And then, of course, it hits me. My DDS (don't do social) confrere isn't turned off by technology. She's rebelling against the added burden of one more demand on her time.
Because, really, who has time to update a motley band of on-again/off-again followers, when there's a management meeting this morning at nine?
Who has the mental space to manufacture a Facebook update that rises above the oh-so-obvious mundane?
Above all, who has the hair-raising hubris to hope that their last-second blurts could magically rise to the level of the noteworthy?
No, social--real social, good social--takes TIME.
And time, of course, is the one currency that Goldman Sachs cannot game.
So, what did I do with my socially challenged GM? I IMed her instantly, of course--to tell her our purpose is to streamline the process without sapping the context of what she and her business have to say. To help her interleave offers with ideas; special rates with local insights. Our goal is to help her get social right in the five or so minutes she has per day.
That's a tall order, I know. I'll let you all know how it goes...
It's a beautiful thing
Yesterday, I spent an hour with one of our application teams, removing from a client system hundreds of really gorgeous visual assets (logos, photos, headlines, design elements) for a brand campaign that was recently uploaded but -- due to decisions above my pay grade-- had been dis-approved, never to see the light of day. (The ultimate "un-do".)
There was something sad in the task, of course--dragging and dropping all that hard work in the oblivion of the Mac's recycle bin. But there was something hopeful there, too. Because clearly, there'd been a fatal flaw in that campaign--and we caught it, and nipped it in the bud, all in less than an hour, before it could cause that client's local marketers (some 800 strong) any confusion or harm.
And that got me to thinking about marketing automation from a different angle. It got me to thinking not just about what our systems enable, but about what they prevent. The inappropriate headline. The improperly kerned font. The performance claim sans legal disclaimer. The unauthorized (and unprofitable) offer.
I looked around at our team -- creatives by background all -- carefully turning off those assets and options. And I realized that they weren't just flipping switches. In a very real way, they were distributing marketing intelligence. Enabling and implementing, so a decision made at brand headquarters would have the desired impact--immediately and absolutely -- half a world away.
So, I started out mourning the untimely death of a beautiful advertising campaign. And ended up appreciating another idea, which has a curious beauty of its own...
There was something sad in the task, of course--dragging and dropping all that hard work in the oblivion of the Mac's recycle bin. But there was something hopeful there, too. Because clearly, there'd been a fatal flaw in that campaign--and we caught it, and nipped it in the bud, all in less than an hour, before it could cause that client's local marketers (some 800 strong) any confusion or harm.
And that got me to thinking about marketing automation from a different angle. It got me to thinking not just about what our systems enable, but about what they prevent. The inappropriate headline. The improperly kerned font. The performance claim sans legal disclaimer. The unauthorized (and unprofitable) offer.
I looked around at our team -- creatives by background all -- carefully turning off those assets and options. And I realized that they weren't just flipping switches. In a very real way, they were distributing marketing intelligence. Enabling and implementing, so a decision made at brand headquarters would have the desired impact--immediately and absolutely -- half a world away.
So, I started out mourning the untimely death of a beautiful advertising campaign. And ended up appreciating another idea, which has a curious beauty of its own...
Pica9 Begins To Blog
From the Desk of Kevin Groome:
I am a writer by trade. I intend to make this a personal (and perforce, somewhat abstruse) reflection on the soul of what we do. My hope (faith, really) is that the people we want to do business are, like me, still fond of the art of advertising. Over time, other themes, and other authors, for pica9 will arise. But for now, we have me. And these. Take a look and let me know what you think.
I am a writer by trade. I intend to make this a personal (and perforce, somewhat abstruse) reflection on the soul of what we do. My hope (faith, really) is that the people we want to do business are, like me, still fond of the art of advertising. Over time, other themes, and other authors, for pica9 will arise. But for now, we have me. And these. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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